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A Brief History of Math

It’s Mathematics Awareness Month, and here at ThinkFun we’re always thinking about math and the importance of learning. While sometimes math can seem boring or abstract, it plays a key role in so many of the things that we do every day. And it took a long time to get to where we are in the mathematical world! Here are a few of the key milestones in math history.

The Lebombo Bone

Whereas now we can use our calculators to figure out the answers to even the most complicated math problems, it took a long time to develop this kind of technology. In the meantime, different societies came up with different innovative ways to keep track of numbers and figure out the answers to complicated mathematical questions. The oldest known mathematical device is from over 37,000 years ago – the Lebombo bone. Discovered in the Lebombo mountain region of current-day Swaziland, the Lebombo bone is the leg-bone of a baboon that its creator engraved with 29 notch marks at even intervals. The Ta Neter Foundation reports that the stick was used either to track “lunar cycles, or used merely as a measuring stick.” However it was used, it is the earliest evidence of humans figuring out how to keep track of numbers.

Euclid’s Elements

Today, one of the most common ways that we learn about math is from a math textbook, and there are hundreds of different kinds out there. But back in 300 BCE, a mathematician named Euclid had just published the very first math textbook, called Elements. Known as the “Father of Geometry,” Euclid arranged the mathematical findings of every mathematician who had come before him and presented the first comprehensive look at the mathematical discoveries of his day. One crazy fact about Elements is that while it is a math textbook, it doesn’t contain any numbers! The book presents mathematical theory without the use of actual numerical measurements. You can find the full text of Euclid’s Elements here.

The Discovery of Pi

According to the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, the ancient Babylonians are the first people who we know figured out the basic concept of pi. Records of their society show that they knew that the circumference, or distance around the edge of, a circle was equal to roughly three times its diameter, or the distance across it. Many years later, around 250 BCE, a philosopher named Archimedes developed a more accurate way of determining the value of pi. Can you figure out how he did it using this sketch?

Modern Day Math

While all of this math history comes from long before our time, there is still much to be discovered about numbers and the way they work. People are still making new mathematical discoveries all the time…the next one could be by you! Who are your favorite mathematicians? What are discoveries that they made that we still use today or learn in school?

Patrick Hackes

My favorite mathematician by far is the 18th Century Swiss mathematician, Leonhard Euler. Euler is the most prolific mathematician in history, having written over 70 volumes of mathematical works. At the age of 28, Euler became world famous when he solved the famous Basel Problem. The problem was to sum the infinite series: 1 + 1/4 + 1/9 + 1/16 + ... + 1/n^2 + ... Euler found the sum to converge to π^2/6, a truly beautiful result. Euler is also responsible for the discovery of e, the base of the natural logarithm. The applications of e in analysis are innumerable, and it rivals the preeminence of π in mathematics. There isn't a branch in mathematics that doesn't have a formula named after Euler; Euler even invented the branch of mathematics now known as Graph Theory! Euler to me is a personal hero and an inspiration. He lived a life of hardship suffering from eyesight difficulties that eventually lead to complete blindness in later life, However, this did not slow him down, as he made use of his amazing mental math and memory skills to continue his mathematical research and publications through dictation to scribes. I'll leave you with this quote by the famous French mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace: "Read Euler, read Euler, he is the master of us all!"
PS: As for the diagram above, one could find the perimeters of the outer and inner hexagons in terms of constant multiples of the diameter of the circle. Doing so would allow you to deduce that the constant of proportionality between the circumference of the circle and its diameter must lie between the previously obtained constants of proportionality. This will the allow you to deduce that π lies between 3 and 2*sqrt(3); or in other words, π lies between 3 and about 3.46.